The Tanning Mom

Patricia Krentcil, a Nutley, N.J., resident who has been tanning her “whole life,” pled not guilty to charges of child endangerment on Wednesday after she was accused to taking her fair-skinned daughter into a tanning bed with her.

Krentcil’s daughter, 6, apparently showed up to school one day with a sunburn, telling friends she went tanning with her mom. But Krentcil – whose skin is an unnatural shade of dark brown as a result of bronzing – says the whole thing is “preposterous” toWCBS New York.

“Look at my daughter’s picture, she’s as pale as a ghost, she has red hair,” Krentcil, 44, said outside of Superior Court. “I’m a great mother, I’m a wonderful mother. I would die right now for her.”

The mom argues that her daughter got some extra color from playing outside, and that when she made the comments about going tanning, she meant going to the tanning salon, not going inside a tanning bed.

“I tan, she doesn’t tan,” Krentcil said during an interview on the Today show. “It’s called a tanning booth and a tanning room.”

Children under the age of 14 are prohibited from tanning in New Jersey.